Firefighter death in Tas raises questions

Date: January 15 2013

The family of a Victorian firefighter who died in Tasmania say they cannot understand why he was working in the bush alone and on foot.

Peter Cramer, a Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) firefighter and CFA volunteer from Tyers in Gippsland, was part of a contingent of more than 70 Victorian emergency services workers sent to Tasmania to help fight the state's devastating fires.

The 61-year-old died on Sunday at Taranna, east of Hobart, while working on foot to identify potential containment lines on the southern boundary of the Forcett fire, about 2-3 kilometres from the active fire edge.

His body was found after he failed to make a scheduled call-in on Sunday afternoon.

Mr Cramer's son-in-law, Brendan Ketteringham, said his family was struggling to accept why he was allowed to be in the field without fellow firefighters around him.

"How they let him get up there and plan firebreaks and walking up through the tracks on his own, we just can't work it out," Mr Ketteringham told Fairfax Radio on Tuesday.

"(He didn't usually work) on his own. He's always a team leader or along that line.

"He's either got blokes under him that he sort of runs and they sort of control all that from either the base or from the back of a ute.

"To me he should have been planning the back burn from the maps, not out on foot by himself."

A respected firefighter, Mr Cramer was a DSE training co-ordinator who also volunteered his time to train CFA volunteers.

Mr Ketteringham said his father-in-law had health problems which would probably have prevented him from travelling again to the United States, where he had twice been deployed in the past.

The DSE said Mr Cramer had passed fitness and medical tests before travelling to Tasmania.

His cause of death is yet to be determined.

When pressed on whether Mr Cramer should have been working alone, Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu said that was a matter for authorities to determine.

"There is an investigation that will take place and I think we owe it to Peter Cramer and his family and his colleagues to let that investigation continue," he told reporters.

"Suffice to say, he was a very experienced firefighter in his own right and had training responsibilities as well."

Mr Baillieu said he had spoken with several of Mr Cramer's colleagues at Melbourne Airport on Tuesday after they returned from Tasmania.

"He was clearly much loved, a very experienced firefighter," he said.

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